Dealing With Maternal Aggression

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Aggression is a force that is inherent in all living things. The energy of life and the courage to take from the environment as needed, courage in self-defense, in defending oneself, personal boundaries. This is the excitement necessary to realize your own intentions. To live in harmony with the aggressive part, to feel, know and use for your own good, not to alienate, but to appropriate, is a necessary condition for a complete living of life.

Everything would be fine, but.

Aggression, due to the danger to others, is criticized from early childhood by parents and other adults. For aggressive behavior and reactions, they are scolded, shamed and punished. The child does not have time to get to know and make friends with the inner beast, as he is immediately forced to learn to suppress it, so that parents, and then society, are not rejected. The beast is driven inside, but does not disappear without a trace. The minotaur wanders through the labyrinths. The owner himself may for the time being unaware of his existence.

That is how it was with me.

The moment comes, it becomes impossible to keep the minotaur in check. Consciousness is no longer able to contain the pressure of discontent and irritation, systematic self-suppression. Our body is aggressive. Suddenly, we find ourselves screaming, baring, and even physically ready to attack the Other.

With mothers, this happens against the background of emotional burnout, when, against the background of chronic lack of sleep and deprivation of key needs, emotional resources become scarce. In this case, the child enters a phase of development when his will begins to clearly go against the will of the parent. The child does not want to follow the instructions, to take into account the needs and desires of the parent. Checks and breaks boundaries and doesn't consider how painful it can be. A suffering child wakes up in us, to whom much was not allowed in childhood.

The more severely the minotaur was suppressed in childhood, the more the will and manifestations of individuality were suppressed, the harder and more aggressive the parent will react to the child's disobedience and inconvenience.

Consciousness is unable to contain a volcanic eruption. Burning streams fall on the child. When the wave subsides, the attack passes, the gloom dissipates, the parent comes to his senses and is often horrified at what he has done - the attack and abuse of his child. Then comes repentance, guilt and shame. The feeling of one's own badness brings the parent back to childhood, in those moments when he was shamed and not accepted. But not being able to do anything about it, the parent feeds the minotaur, provides food for the next attack.

How to get out of this vicious circle?

There is no one right way. We need work in several directions.

1. Working with illusions and expectations.

- One big illusion concerns a child: "a child is a small adult." This is a miniature copy of a mature, reasonable and balanced adult. The child should understand even better than us what we want from him. Which is completely inconsistent with reality. The child is irrational. His behavior is subject to emotions, images and momentary impulses. A child can obey and do as an adult wants, if this is consistent with his emotional state and needs. It is necessary to negotiate with the child, but you should not expect that the child will responsibly fulfill the contract - perhaps he did not understand at all, or immediately forgot. He does not have a developed prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for thoughtful, conscious behavior.

- There are other illusions. They relate to mirages and pictures, how the development and upbringing of children will take place, what kind of mothers and fathers we will be, how life in a family will be built. These are perfect picture images. Disagreement with them causes anxiety and irritation.

- Different beliefs - who, to whom and what "owes". Often, these are introjects, messages-attitudes, learned from childhood. "Real man", "real woman", "child", "always", "never", "everything", "right", "wrong", "should" - these are generalizations that have nothing to do with real circumstances, people and their feelings.

Living in illusions and expectations, we alienate the people around us and our own lives. We don't see them. In addition, we shift the responsibility for realizing our fantasies to others.

The job is to recognize that introject, on the basis of which irritation and anger often arise, and subject it to criticism.

2. Taking care of yourself. Taking responsibility for meeting needs, personal boundaries and replenishing resources.

The mother, having taken responsibility for the child's life, plunging into the child, often ceases to be responsible for herself. With men, the situation is similar, the husband takes responsibility for the material well-being of the family, and removes for himself. A mother expects that her husband, mother-in-law, her own mother and even the child himself, paradoxically, will understand what she needs and take care of. In fact, they will take on the handles. Not meeting self-care and not satisfying needs on our own, we heat up the boiler, in which the broth of dissatisfaction boils. An insignificant reason is enough to explode and pour out the accumulated irritation.

What does it mean to take responsibility? To do everything myself and not rely on anyone?

Just the opposite. We can negotiate, communicate needs and boundaries, share responsibility for the child, ask. The task is to monitor the state and take the necessary steps to normalize it. Observe mental hygiene, take care of the physical condition (food, sleep, jogging, exercise). Know yourself, sore spots and take care in advance so that it does not become abruptly and suddenly bad. By avoiding taking care of ourselves, we drive ourselves into a corner. A driven beast is dangerous. You shouldn't sacrifice yourself by fulfilling your parental duty. Sacrifice is too high a price for which someone will have to pay, often a child.

The birth of a child changes the structure of the family, rebuilds relationships, distribution of responsibilities and communication. The couple will have to reconsider the relationship and find a new balance that would suit everyone - to hear what the partner wants, to understand about himself what is missing, and to find words to convey it.

3. Work with the development of the skill of inhibiting affect.

Our emotional outburst has precursors - sensations in the body. Increased heartbeat, rush of blood to the face and limbs, breathing becomes powerful. At this moment, you can still have time to press pause. Get out of sparring, move away from the child, look out the window, count to 10, with attention return to your own body. Talk about your state, your emotions and needs. Gradually, the muscle will pump up to keep itself from a flash of anger. Disruptions will be less common. Breakdown is not an inevitable evil, it has phases and development. The ability to cope with tides of anger when the desire to attack and destroy is bursting is a skill that can be learned.

4. Finding compassion for yourself and your child.

Alienation can be overcome through compassion, through emotional empathy for the difficulties of the Other. Our child is small and completely depends on us. He is defenseless in front of us and cannot oppose anything. He needs support to cope with difficulties and his own emotions. We often treat ourselves too harshly and demandingly. We judge ourselves more severely than anyone else. Our oppressive Super-Ego, an internal strict parent, drives us into devaluation of our own merits and protrusion of mistakes. By being hard on ourselves, we become hard on the people around us. We say - "we are not appreciated", projecting dissatisfaction with ourselves and self-depreciation on others. Compassion, empathy, looking at yourself from the outside as a close, dear person who, as best he can, copes with tasks and difficulties - allows you to loosen your grip a little.

Introjects and obligations are objects for comparison. We compare ourselves to ideals and find discrepancies. To see yourself alive, timidly emerging from behind the picture, to meet and try to make friends means to get closer to yourself, to accept yourself. The person who is accepted does not bristle, does not defend himself, and does not attack.

5. Dealing with chronic pain.

The windmills that appear and with which we are at war are haunted from the past. The brain distorts reality, substitutes pictures of people and situations that once caused pain. Then we could not do anything, defend ourselves, we had to retreat. The pain of defeat, the fear of repeated attacks, forces one to attack preemptively. To go back in time, end contact, relive the situation - close the gestalt - then it becomes possible to let go of the situation. The tension will go away, and with it automatic aggressive behavior.

6. Grieving for the unlived.

Mourning unfulfilled dreams, ideas, plans - "unborn children". It would seem that we have not lost anything and should not suffer. But for the brain, it makes no difference whether the event was real or not. Part of us dies when it doesn't find life. By choosing one, we reject something else. It's always a fork. Having chosen to give birth to a child, a woman refuses professional self-realization and a free life, at least in the version as it was before the birth. To admit to yourself that some dreams are no longer destined to come true is to face futility and finally fully live the parting. Having freed up space, we give the opportunity to come to a new one.

7. Creative action. Using the energy of aggression in creation.

Aggression as an attack is one use case. Aggression - translated from Latin - "movement to", "approach". In this sense, you can consciously move yourself, direct energy and excitement into the material, into actions, while receiving joy. If there is no sphere in which we could be realized, often energy is transferred to the sphere of relationships, turning them into a battlefield. If our energy, aggressiveness, is not realized in sexual relations, it becomes destructive.

8. Solitude, hike to the "inner mountains".

If we do not feed the minotaur with spiritual food, he will seek food outside, he will thirst for blood. A short meditation, reading philosophical literature, a walk in the woods alone - there are many options. It takes time when we stop, press pause and listen to our breathing, to the heartbeat, and then go outside the body. We give food for the mind and heart, we live the meanings, we are transported into the realm of the transcendental. Having been there, we return a little different. These are the moments when our brain integrates experiences, experiences and us as individuals.

9. Recognition of their aggressive part.

If we treat our aggression as someone else's child, strangle, hide in the closet, say to ourselves - "this is not me", "this is not mine", we are ashamed - he will take revenge. Aggression will come out in bizarre and intricate forms. The brain will project aggression - people around you will seem aggressive and cruel. This is a fragment of a distorting mirror stuck in our eye. We will be frustrated, but blame others for it. Our aggression will turn on ourselves as well - our body will suffer from incomprehensible diseases and symptoms. We need to recognize the "prodigal child", appropriate our aggression, resolve and learn to love it.

Knowing yourself, the ability to find aggression, the time, place and way of expression means the return of the rejected part of your own soul and energy of life.

Elena Dotsenko, psychologist, child psychologist, gestalt therapist